Vermont Wanderlust Festival Day Three: Anusara, Off The Mat, Into The World

By ecorazzicontributor | June 26, 2011

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Saturday morning started with a playful Anusara flow yoga class with Desiree Rumbaugh. This class challenged you to go beyond your comfort zone and experiment with how far you could take the pose. With the comfort and trust of a partner we ended the class with handstands, one of the most challenging and intimidating poses. This idea of community and challenging yourself slowly became the theme of the day.

Following this yoga class I had the opportunity to interview Sean Corne and Suzanne Sterling of Off The Mat, Into The World. “Off the Mat Into the World uses the power of yoga to inspire conscious, sustainable activism and ignite grassroots social change. They do this by facilitating personal empowerment through leadership training, fostering community collaboration, and initiating local and global service projects.”

Sean and Suzanne discussed their past projects and the current project which is raising money for their service project in Haiti. To help with these efforts to raise money for this project Wanderlust hosts a YogaAid challenge, encouraging attendees to money for the charity and in return having the opportunity for a free class with Sean Corne and Michael Franti.

After this interview with OTM I headed to a class with the founder of Anusara yoga, John Friend. In his class he connected geometry, science and yoga to help participants gain a better understand of those poses and the way in which we need have our bodies move to do a poses more effectively. He combined lecture with practice and educational demonstrations.

My last event of the day was a SpeakEasy with the founders of Wanderlust, Jeff Krasno, Schyuler Grant and Sean Hoess. Jeff spoke on the vision of Wanderlust and of their greening practices, which is of huge importance to the festival. They brought in a green consultant, Zero Hero, to help with implementing different practices which include stations for recycling, composting, trash, using compost-able cutlery and bio-desiel, among others. They made the emphasis on the importance of having the consultant come in and make sure that all of these initiatives where actually followed through on.

In addition to very literal greening efforts like recycling, ect. the founders of Wanderlust are trying to create a festival that educates its participants on green practices. One way they are doing this is through their expanding lecture series which brings in guest speakers many of whom have discussed their greening efforts. This years “green” guest speakers included Majora Carter, Long Trial Brewmasters, Adam Kelinson and Robert Backus.